Two months till Sochi: Who and what to watch

At the moment, Sochi resembles a giant landscape gardening project, as workers rush to lay turf and plant chalets that have sprung up in the mountains. Pictured: Arena 'Adler.' Source: Sochi 2014

It’s down to the wire for the athletes – and the city – preparing for the Olympics. Here’s a rundown of what to watch out for in the next couple of weeks.

Guatemala in July 2007, hot and humid, was the unlikely
venue to decide the destination of the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s been a long
road since then, but now the atmosphere in Russia is crackling with
anticipation. With just under two months until the Feb. 7 opening ceremony in
Sochi, here are the people and issues to keep your eye on:

For many athletes, the Olympics don’t start in February,
they’ve been going on for months already, even years. In some sports, making
the national team is half the battle, whether that’s down to coaches’
selections, as in hockey - I wouldn’t fancy picking a Canada or Russia roster
from the NHL’s stars - or the merciless points tables of a ski World Cup
series.

By far the toughest battles come in figure skating,
though, where there is a maximum of three places per country in each discipline
- causing problems for countries like Japan who have many skaters among the
world’s elite. That arbitrary cutoff turns otherwise routine national
championships into thrilling, fratricidal battles where Olympics dreams die
before the Sochi events even start. In Russia, there is just one available
men’s skating slot, and veteran Evgeni Plushenko, the Olympic gold medalist at
the 2006 Turin Games, must beat up-and-comer Maxim Kovtun. As Sochi comes
closer, even small-scale competitions pack real venom.

Lindsay Vonn’s knee

The blonde bombshell of the pistes is arguably winter
sports’ biggest name. Hailing from Minnesota, the 29-year-old reigning Olympic
downhill champion is a rarity at Sochi 2014 - the crossover star who has become
a mainstream name. Part of Vonn’s popularity comes from being in sports’ No. 1
power couple thanks to her relationship with Tiger Woods, but most of it is the
result of hard graft in the fastest, most dangerous discipline on the slopes,
as well as the engaging personality that lights up TV talk shows.

The only problem is that Vonn has an Achilles heel - or
rather an anterior cruciate ligament, the thin band of tissue in the knee that
allows you to pivot. It’s crucial for everyone, especially elite skiers, but
Vonn has only a sliver of ACL left in her right knee after numerous injuries,
and had to miss her first World Cup event of the season in Colorado. Can she
get to Sochi, and will she be on form when she gets there?

Among the other big names battling injuries is Canadian
hockey star Steve Stamkos, whose right leg was broken in a brutal hit while
playing for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Boston Bruins a month ago. He’s
already walking without crutches, but in a sport where speed and agility are
crucial, it’s not yet clear whether he’ll have that crucial edge at the
Olympics.

One confirmed casualty is reigning Olympic figure
skating champion Evan Lysacek, who said Tuesday he hasn’t been able to recover
from a hip injury. "Words cannot describe how disappointed
I am to not be able to compete in Sochi," Lysacek said. How many more
times will we hear that from a star name ahead of the Games?

Doping scandals (or, hopefully, a lack of them)

It’s the shadow stalking sports at all times: the use of
performance enhancing drugs to gain an unfair advantage over the opposition. No
Winter Olympics since 1998 has passed without at least one athlete being caught
with an unnatural edge, and the nadir came in 2002, when the winners of six cross-country
skiing gold medals were found to be dirty.

There was a timely reminder of the dangers Monday when
18-year-old Anna Orlovskaya of Russia was banned for two years for breaking
anti-doping rules. While not an Olympic medal contender, she is a national
champion for the host nation in slopestyle and ski halfpipe, two sports making
their debut in Sochi, and could easily have been on the host nation’s team if
her drug use had not been discovered.

There’s one extra detail this year, though. The drug test
laboratory in Moscow, one of just 32 around the world considered capable of
handling top sports events, may lose the accreditation it needs to test the
Sochi samples. The World Anti-Doping Agency has criticized its “compliance” and
set a strict timetable for reforms. The pressure seems to have eased for the
moment, but if the lab doesn’t shape up, all the Sochi samples flown abroad for
testing - in itself a potential contamination risk.

The Olympic Park takes shape

There are plenty of risks ahead of the Games, and they
feed the competitive tension the Games thrives upon. The one thing that’s
really guaranteed to build anticipation, however, is seeing the host city come
together. The vast scale of the project is impressive in itself, even more so
is how quickly Sochi and its surrounding area have changed.

All the big infrastructure projects - carving road and
rail links out of hillsides - have been completed, with the exception of the
somewhat-delayed Fisht Olympic Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies.
At the moment, Sochi resembles a giant landscape gardening project, as workers
rush to lay turf and plant chalets that have sprung up in the mountains.

After six years, $50 billion and plenty of twists and turns,
Sochi 2014 is happening. Watch this space.